The Two Types of Training

[snowleopard]

effectiveness = the energy expended in each stroke;
efficiency = combining effectiveness with high ratings.

We aready have a measure of the energy expended in each stroke. It isn't called effectiveness.

Why is efficiency not possible at low ratings? Let me guess, because you're a short lwt?

Furthermore, since you have already stated that efficiency and effectiveness are mutually exclusive:

It is impossible to have maximum effectiveness and maximum efficiency at the same time, as they are opposites.

You cannot effectively be efficient at any rating.

Maybe you should stick to dog grooming.

[NavigationHazard]

What part of 'the monitor has no way of knowing how efficiently you're working when you're applying force to the handle' is so hard to fathom?

Once again. There is no good way to measure the energy expended by a rower during a stroke. As far as the monitor is concerned, all it ever can determine is that the flywheel accelerates on a drive and then decelerates until it accelerates again on the next drive.

Does the monitor use your HR to calculate pace? Does it use your respiration rate as a proxy for intensity? Or your stroke volume? Or how much air you respired vis-a-vis your lung capacity? Does it track the rate of sweat production as a proxy for measuring heat dissipation? Does it use gas-exchange analysis to try to disentangle the contribution of the various energy pathways you're using when rowing? Does it track blood chemistry? Does it do muscle biopsies to see what's going on within the skeletal muscles? Does it know the mix of muscle fibres you have in your arms, legs, or trunk? Does it know which fibers you've recruited during a specific contraction? Does it know your shin angle when you take the catch, or whether you raise the chain as the handle crosses your knees? Does it know your femur length as opposed to your tibia, and how your effective lower-limb levers change during a stroke? Does it know your trunk angle at the catch and at the finish? Etc. etc. etc.

Hell, does it ask you to rate your effort for the stroke you just took on the Borg scale of perceived intensity?

No, no, no, no.

Then how can watts as displayed on the monitor divided by rating possibly reflect some absolute standard of biomechanical efficiency?

[mikvan52]

effectiveness = the energy expended in each stroke;
efficiency = combining effectiveness with high ratings.

Here's a spin, John:

efficiency=not wasting energy to get a job done in a reasonable amt. of time
effectiveness = winning today's race at all costs




"When the going gets tough, the tough get going"
.........Vince Lombardi

"Home!, James.... and don't spare the horses"

[johnlvs2run]

Repeat for those who missed it.
http://www.c2forum.com/viewtopic.php?p=127408#127408

For lightweights who row effectively, pulling 12 SPI when they race, those who rate 30 spm in a 2K pull 1:39; those who rate 32 spm pull 1:37, those who rate 34 spm pull 1:35; those who rate 36 spm pull 1:33; those who rate 38 spm pull 1:31.5; those who rate 40 spm pull 1:30.

If their aerobic capacity is good, efficiency determines how high they can get the rate.

ranger

This effective vs efficient discussion goes back a long time.

If I understand correctly what you're saying:
effectiveness = the energy expended in each stroke;
efficiency = combining effectiveness with high ratings.

At some point there's a tradeoff. In your case, you are maximizing your energy expenditure with each stroke, because that's what spi is.

Then you are trying to up your rating, after expending all of your energy.

To me, that sounds like a conflicting ambition, that is at least extremely unlikely, and more likely impossible.

It is impossible because, as you gain any capability to increase the rating, this is first expended in effectiveness, thus lost to efficiency.

The result is that you can never have any gain of efficiency.

This is why I feel you should let the spi go, because it is sabotaging you and it is sabotaging your rowing.

[johnlvs2run]

Rich defines a high spi as effectiveness.

Rowing with a high effectiveness (spi) maximizes the energy put into each stroke.

The opposite of that is efficient rowing, which is making the best use of one's energy.

[bloomp]

Efficiency is best exhibited in runners. The runner that most efficiently runs will probably win the race. They have a very LOW wattage for the speeds they achieve.

I conclude, efficiency is inversely related to body mass. To row well with a high mass, you don't have to be as efficient. To row well with a low mass, well you better be damn efficient. Less muscle means it is that much harder to have an effective stroke at a high rating.

In my mind the following is how athletes scale in efficiency:
Runners > Cyclists > XC Skiers > LW Rowers > HW Rowers

Whereas in effectiveness, you'd see this:
HW Rowers > Cyclists > LW Rowers > Runners > XC Skiers

The runners I think of are lumbering football players that have to recruit an incredible number of fibers to get their bodies moving at any decent speed. Thus, they are effective at using their bodies to generate wattage, but not efficient in generating wattage over time.

The WR for a marathon is 15% faster on foot than on the erg, completely attributable to the fact that a runner is much more efficient. Yet over a shorter distance, that gap hits 31% for a 100m sprint. The efficiency of a runner is still hugely advantageous to the effectiveness of a lumbering giant on a machine (sorry Robby). Then when you compare LW to HW marathon records, you see a tiny difference. 4 minutes, 12.1 seconds between the LW marathon WR and the HW marathon WR. That's at most a 3% difference. The efficiency battle clearly points to the lighter athlete still being able to pull terribly fast.

Even at the unique 2000m distance rowers race, there is a 22 second difference between men that weight easily 40 pounds different. That still only amounts to a 6% difference in times between the two.

My point - efficiency trumps all.

[NavigationHazard]

Power to weight is quite a different thing than your ability to translate a given unit of metabolic energy into handle movement.

[johnlvs2run]

Paul,
that's a really good explanation.

[bloomp]

Power to weight is quite a different thing than your ability to translate a given unit of metabolic energy into handle movement.

Yes, but according to my argument, the only way a LW rower could be that close to a HW rowers times is by being much more efficient than them. The same thing has been seen in TDF cyclists. A higher VO2 max doesn't come close to indicating the fastest course rider. The smaller man is more efficient and doesn't need the same numbers as a big man to be fast.

On the erg, however, weight is not a factor and the more effective athlete has a serious advantage. So there is a certain connection between metabolic ability and the inverse connection relationship I pointed out earlier.

[NavigationHazard]

Rowing with a high effectiveness (spi) maximizes the energy put into each stroke.

How many times can I say it? Spi is watts divided by rating. Period.

It's derived from output. It's an indirect measure of output. It's a comparative metric of output. In itself it says NOTHING about the biomechanical efficiency of rower input. Zip. Zilch. Nil. Nada. Zero.

[NavigationHazard]

OTW, LWs can come comparatively close to HW times because power-to-weight is a significant issue (the more hull in the water per capita the more resistance for the boat).

It doesn't mean they're ipso facto more efficient metabolically, or somehow better in terms of the way their skeletons and muscles are hinged and arranged, or for that matter automatically better rowers technically.

If you want to define efficiency in terms of power to weight, then doh, LWs score better than HWs. But if you define it in terms of ability to translate a given unit of metabolic energy into moving a handle, I don't see how weight in itself is a factor.

[bloomp]

OTW, LWs can come comparatively close to HW times because power-to-weight is a significant issue (the more hull in the water per capita the more resistance for the boat).

It doesn't mean they're ipso facto more efficient metabolically, or somehow better in terms of the way their skeletons and muscles are hinged and arranged, or for that matter automatically better rowers technically.

If you want to define efficiency in terms of power to weight, then doh, LWs score better than HWs. But if you define it in terms of ability to translate a given unit of metabolic energy into moving a handle, I don't see how weight in itself is a factor.

Fair enough, and I can't say I've ever found a study that associates increased muscle mass with decreased metabolic capabilities. Though that would be a very interesting hypothesis for research. Have three groups, a control that does X amount of cardio per day for a month, a group that does 2X cardio, and a group that does X cardio and hypertrophy. Make sure the sampled people are similar in body composition and see what happens with VO2 max and lactate measurements during exercise as well as other blood proteins and various hormones.

But how else could you explain the slim differences between a LW and HW on the erg? A fair conclusion that one would have to go with is that as distance goes to infinity, relevance of mass to performance goes to zero. Too bad not a huge number of people have sat through 100km to see if there's some plausibility behind that.

[bloomp]

AHA!

I have a possible explanation.

Muscle is hugely inefficient. Some 70% of energy put into it yields only heat. The more muscle that one is recruiting to do work, the more heat your body is producing. That amplifies the rate of fluid/salt loss, as well as bumps up HR slightly faster due to dehydration. The amplification would then possibly force a rower who is hugely effective to not recruit as much muscle - even though he could theoretically still use more to pull faster as distance increases. However by using more, he tires faster, probably enters glycolysis faster and dehydrates faster.

Or is the heat difference negligible? The 40 extra pounds that a HW rower would have on a LW would probably be 10 pounds fat, 10 pounds bone and 20 pounds muscle. That might be enough to make a difference with the amount of heat that would be produced. You'd have to look at the body compositions of elite LW and HW rowers to get a precise idea of it though.

[johnlvs2run]

How many times can I say it? Spi is watts divided by rating. Period.

Yeah but I already said that, and ....

This is why effectiveness, i.e. spi, is wasteful, because time is excluded.

It's [spi] derived from output. It's an indirect measure of output. It's a comparative metric of output. In itself it says NOTHING about the biomechanical efficiency of rower input. Zip. Zilch. Nil. Nada. Zero.

Right.

Effectiveness (spi) has nothing to do with efficiency.

Effectiveness (spi), which is inefficiency, is the opposite of efficiency.

[johnlvs2run]

If you want to define efficiency in terms of power to weight, then doh, LWs score better than HWs. But if you define it in terms of ability to translate a given unit of metabolic energy into moving a handle, I don't see how weight in itself is a factor.

That's because weight gets a free ride with the handle.

If the handle represented a percentage of the rower's weight, then the power to weight ratio would apply.